Mini Movie Review – Sexy Beast, 2000

Sexy Beast is a real treat. The kind of film where you just don’t know what to expect going into it, and then it continues to defy your expectations at every turn. I guess this is essentially a heist film, but it puts its focus on small character moments rather than the crime and is all the better for it. It’s also very funny, I found myself laughing not just at the dialogue, but the great character moments they were building into each scene. The script is great at using the story to inform what we know about the characters, and then using what we know about the characters to conversely inform the story. And Glazer adds this great layer of his own to that with a particularly interesting use of montage and jump cuts, which he uses to reveal information and exposition in interesting ways, rather than show the passing of time.

I probably would’ve skipped over Sexy Beast had I not seen Glazer’s excellent film Under The Skin the skin last year (my review) and become interested in him. Based on only those two films, he seems to have a fascination with the way things look underwater. And he’s got a great way of shooting mundane things and bringing life to them. Something about the colors he chooses to highlight and the way he moves his camera, very fluid and “filmic” but also observational and voyeuristic . There’s something about his movies, something I want to take a closer look at and see if I can find the words to describe, his movies just sing. This is well worth seeing.